Some SF writers have a love affair with their shiny new tech. It never breaks down, and they don't worry about its effects on the world it's unleashed on. But my independent mind asks questions like "Why are we doing this?" and "What are the side-effects of this process?" And often I read another's invented world and ask why nobody is doing anything about its harsh injustices.
Humans have independent minds, and you'll never find a bunch of us all seeing the world the same way. Dissention will always be with us. People will always hold a broad spectrum of beliefs and values. And yet in too many SF stories I see no evidence of these independent minds.
Currently, women protagonists seem to have morphed from feminist military SF to kick-ass (a phrase I hate) bounty hunters. My independent mind has no connection to these so-called women. They look like a recycling of the ladette, with the addition of her willingness to have unlimited sex with as many people as she can find. Ho hum.
Which leaves me feeling disconnected from SF yet again. I had hopes that the equal representation in the genre issue might translate into seeing books that show women in a broad range of occupations and situations. Maybe they'd put down the blaster and find the antidote to the plague that's decimating the planet instead. Perhaps they'd use their calm demeanour to negotiate with a warlike alien species bent on taking over their planet and save their world and their people.
I've bought and read a couple of this year's awards books, but I haven't enjoyed either of them. Getting to the end became a matter of willpower. I looked on reading them as academic research. I had to resort to that because I had no connection with the protagonists. I didn't fall in love with the stories' ideas either.
Somebody might argue that there's no room for independent minds in the middle of a thousand years' war, but I'd argue that the agronomist tending the fields growing food, the doctor working away to provide a treatment for the diseases of the battlefield, are vital to their species' survival. It's time we heard it for the quiet power and independent minds of these people working out of the spotlight. These are the stabilisers of their worlds.
I want to see the genre show the independent thinking that marks out the human mind. How about stories arising from conflict over a society-shattering new technology? And what about really challenging attitudes to sexuality. How about freedom from sex? What would a world ruled by a woman with no sexual interest in anyone be like? Less open to corruption? SF is supposed to be the genre that questions and challenges the status quo. Let's reclaim that function.
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